Hello everyone and welcome to Ana's home for recovering protection paladins. I'm tired of spreading my questions out through emails and forum pms, and the EJ thread is kind of smelly, so I made us a home here. Please take a seat and let's discuss that most superior of DPS specs -- retribution.

I'll start off with some of the gear questions I've been thinking about lately.

Valor point gear-- my plan is to do relic, then cloak, then neck.

Tier gear-- plans? T13 2pc is something I would like to obtain fairly quickly, but the reports I've read of a long, long (1 second +) delay on the HP generation from Judge really annoy me.

As for when to switch, I haven't simmed it yet to find out when it would be worth breaking my 391 T12. Share with me if you have decided or simmed it for yourself. My feel is that it's not worth breaking for raid finder loots but is worth breaking for 397 so long as the bug with the HP generation is resolved. I know I've been told by one person that he plans to get 2pc ASAP and another that he plans to break for 2pc 397. What's your plan?

Offset piece. What's your plan?

Trinkets--

Since I was not mainspec ret last tier, I was not able to obtain a Firestone for AOK. I know that there are heavily differing opinions on the value/futureproof nature of AOK and simming will only tell me so much.... I'm wondering in general whether it's worth picking up a Firestone for it at this point, since we will be back in FL this week & possibly later for mounts / staves. What do you think? What are your trinket plans?

Right now I'm looking at Eye of Unmaking & Bone Link Fetish as the trinket options to have.

Thoughts, fellow rollers of face?

PS: Having now raided with the buffs live, I am a big huge fan of them. I hope you all enjoyed being ret this week as much as I have.

"Hold on, hold on, let me make sure I've got this straight. You're telling me that a critical part of our strategy for this fight will be to have the ret paladins go stand in the fire? Yeah, we can handle that." -- DSWarden

I'm doing my relic first, since it's the only thing affordable the first week, and you can't get the cloak until the second week regardless. Relic week 1, Cloak week 2, Neck week 4.

The report on EJ about the 2pc having a long delay worries me. That changes the value of picking it up, but presumably it's a bug that will be fixed soon. Ignoring the delay, I'd value 4pc391 about equal to 2pc397. I have no sims to back me up, but I'm actually struggling to get off the full 35s of Zealotry on half the fights, due to swaps or movement. I'm also a big fan of planning for endgame, where Zealotry will be 20s, and Judgement will give HP, so the sooner I can start practicing, the better. I picked up LFR shoulders earlier this week (which are barely worse than 391s), and as soon as I get a 397 tier piece to go with it, I'll make the swap. However, that is most likely earlier than the point where it actually becomes a dps increase to do so. I'd love to see some math arguing for one or the other though.

Figuring out offset is hard. We don't know if Heroics are going to be linear or if certain bosses will be easier than others. I know by the end of the tier, I plan on using shoulders as the offpiece, because Spine of Deathwing's shoulders are a half tier ahead of our set pieces, but I also imagine that it will be a while before we're 7/8H. Our 4pc is so good that I'd say pick up whatever tier pieces you can, as fast as you can, and go from there. I would use 4pc LFR T13 over 4pc391 T12 if I had to.

I use heroic AoK, and love it to pieces. It'll be even better with Zealotry adding 18% more damage. I don't see me replacing it until I have heroic Bone Link Fetish. I picked up Eye of Unmaking this week, and plan on keeping it. In my mind, H Eye of Unmaking > H Bone Link > N. Eye of Unmaking > H AoK > N. Bone Link. But I value AoK pretty highly (I love my burst), so others may disagree.

I wish there was some hard math for Gurthalak, so I know where it falls in comparison to our other weapon options. I use normal Sulfuras right now (H Rag is a jerk and has never dropped a heroic one for us), so pretty much everything is an upgrade. But unless the Gurthalak proc is noticably overbudget, I'd use heroic sulfuras over anything pre-heroic.

Outside of tier gear, trinkets, and weapons, I don't know how I'd prioritize gearing. 391 to 397 is awfully minimal, so until we're burning through heroics, I'd focus on tier gear over anything else.

So far, the buffs seem pretty awesome. WoL isn't showing the second half of the fights (edit: looks fixed now), which makes it hard to break down my performance, but I was fighting with our legendary staff users for top of the meters most of the time, single target, multitarget, or AoE. I'm sure things will change as we all become more comfortable with the fights, but it's a far cry from where last tier started. We're also the source of the 3% damage buff, assuming your mages all went fire, which doesn't hurt our raid resume.

Edit: My only real complaint is that I can't use holy radiance while moving or as a quick gap filler, now that it has a cast time.

Tier gear - I definitely wouldn't pick up LFR tier and replace 391 tier, but replacing 378 might be worth it. As Pliers said, a lot of these fights have heavy movement or switching (looking at you, Warlord and Hagara) which severely gimps our 4pT12 cooldown rotation. Therefore, we aren't seeing the full benefit of that set bonus. If they resolve the delay bug, it might be worth skinny dipping into the Raid Finder.

I'm in the same boat as Ana with AoK; never got a Firestone when I had the trinket. I doubt we will head back into FL any time soon, so that bursty ship has sailed for me.

•Breaking Heroic 4T12 (iLevel 391) for LFR 2T13 (iLevel 384) is an upgrade. Losing iLevel and the Zealotry bonus seem to be overwhelmed by the bonus HP generation

•Even with HoW crit rate vastly reduced, the priority of HoW ahead of Exo seems to remain. I suspect this is because delaying HoW will set back the CD on the next, while delaying Exo rarely will lose an Exo proc.

There's more, but those are the things that surprised me. I would have assumed HoW was worse than Exorcism post nerf, and he has the 2pc bonus mathed out.

Last edited by Pliers on Thu Dec 01, 2011 1:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Wow, seriously? Breaking T12 for LFR t13 is an upgrade? But LFR gear is dirty and yucky and smells like pug .... :C I won't believe it until I sim it myself.

edit-The report of the 2pc bug worries me too but I must imagine they'll fix it. A delay of almost a GCD on resource generation is absolutely not going to cut it. I do hope they fix it before I start to get ahold of the 2pc because I too want to get myself used to the "feel" of a judgement-generating-HP rotation as soon as possible. I guess it's a good thing that they're an upgrade so quickly.

I picked up the 397 gloves last night -- my plan (not supported by math, just "plan") was to wear shoulders off. Hopefully I wasn't wrong.

We haven't seen the mace either Pliers; we're in that boat weapon wise too.

I am really curious about the heroic modes but I guess we won't know what is likely to be killable early and what's likely to be kil't late until we start to see them next week. I'll expect a full report from all you tuesday raiders.

Last edited by anafielle on Thu Dec 01, 2011 1:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"Hold on, hold on, let me make sure I've got this straight. You're telling me that a critical part of our strategy for this fight will be to have the ret paladins go stand in the fire? Yeah, we can handle that." -- DSWarden

I booted up his spreadsheet, and it shows me gaining 280 dps by swapping 2 pieces down to the 384 versions (I didn't fix reforging, so this # is probably off, but I don't have time to redo it right now). I know the shoulders gain a socket even on the LFR version, and end up being incredibly close to 391s, so you don't sacrifice much in the way of stats by swapping down 7ilvl. It looks like the 2pc is a sizable dps boost based on his spreadsheet, and I don't know if it factors in a change in Judgements prioritization or not (it doesn't appear to, but I don't know if that's intended).

Edit:Even with the 2pc bug, there should be time to account for it and swap. I haven't seen it in action, but you could probably mentally tick off the holy power, and plan accordingly, though it shouldn't require mental acrobatics just to dps.

They're going to want the deathwing fights to be difficult relative to the rest (and they already are on normal), while fights like Morchok are so easy that it would have to be completely changed to make it a real challenge on heroic. #3 might be easier than #2, etc, but I imagine heroic progression will be roughly linear.

I'm actually glad that the 2pc is (apparently) so valuable. Not getting the full 35s out of Zealotry just makes me that much more committed to getting my tier bonuses ASAP, above all else.

•Even with HoW crit rate vastly reduced, the priority of HoW ahead of Exo seems to remain. I suspect this is because delaying HoW will set back the CD on the next, while delaying Exo rarely will lose an Exo proc.

Wha... I want to see the math on this one.

As for the 2pT13, I think I'll have to reload Power Auras and maybe set something up to let me know I got an HP after I use Judgement. I really hope they actually fix this, and I don't see why they wouldn't; they want to make it proc HP in MoP anyway, why not get the change done now (through tier, of course)?

I think it's a similar situation to in Wrath where even though Crusader Strike hit like a wet noodle it was still a very high priority move because delaying it meant delaying all of them. Delaying HoW in this situation is delaying the cooldown by an amount, where Exo doesn't have a strict cooldown and is instead proc based, delaying it a GCD or two is quite unlikely to actually reduce the number of Exorcisms you'll actually receive in the course of the fight.

Pliers wrote:It looks like the 2pc is a sizable dps boost based on his spreadsheet, and I don't know if it factors in a change in Judgements prioritization or not (it doesn't appear to, but I don't know if that's intended).

I'm actually glad that the 2pc is (apparently) so valuable. Not getting the full 35s out of Zealotry just makes me that much more committed to getting my tier bonuses ASAP, above all else.

Hy all,Yesterday I updated my hc 4pc T12 to 2pc t13 1pcLFR T13 and 2T12 hc...(thank you Baradin hold )I changed my rotation to CS>J>HW>exo, and i'ts 10x more fun...There is a bug of about 1sec. But i hope is something that you can mentaly manage, even using CLCret.The Holy power only shows as the next GCD it's ending...i.e. this is how it looks0s - Crusader strike - 1holy power1,5s - Judgment - 1holy power2,9s - magicaly appears - 2holy power3s - Crusader strike - 3holy power4,5 - Templar Veridic/Word of glory/Înquisition...It's mildly anoing when you get miss on judgment but that is something that i'm happy to live with (hit capped)...

The sad news is that i'm lagging behind on the dps, even related to the other melles... (we are now 2retris and both are geting behind...)

An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.

Mannstein wrote:The sad news is that i'm lagging behind on the dps, even related to the other melles... (we are now 2retris and both are geting behind...)

Really? Interesting, I haven't noticed that yet. I was crushing everyone in an LFR of Fall of Deathwing the other day, including some high DPS guildmates, but I know that's apples and oranges.

I'll post logs of my guild's normal Morchok kill next week and see how things stack up amongst our melee (who should all be on equal footing thanks to the ranged DPS getting delegated to crystal duty, hehe).

I'm very happy with Ret so far, and my damage is definitely better, relative to the rest of my raid, than it was in Firelands. Tonight is our cleanup night, so I'll be able to compare on fights we've all had a chance to see, but I expect that I will continue to be near the top of the meters, rather than struggling my way to the middle.

We're also some of the best burst in the game. Fast, hard swaps, or periods of burst are our bread and butter, and we've got the best survivability out of anyone except for rogues.

I'm in a postey mood today, so I figured I'd write something of a preemptive FAQ to answer some of the common questions I've been getting and maybe help some tanks looking to gear up their offspecs.

Q: What off-set piece do I use?A: At the T13 normal level, its almost a toss-up between gloves and shoulders; For tank offspecs, I'd reccomend shoulders, because your 397-offset gloves are purchased with valor points and you have mainspec stuff to buy with those. The tier gloves are not great, and the offset hands are solid. The other alternative are the 403 shoulders from Spine. These are amazing, but the tier shoulders are also decent. Use whichever you can get, and pick up your T13 4pc in the other slots. At the heroic level, there are no offset gloves, so the offset shoulders are the clear winner.

Q: What about my trinkets?A: There's a lot of discussion on this, and no 100% correct answer. H Eye of the Unmaking and H Bone Link Fettesh (whirlwind trink) are your BiS. Reg Eye and LFR Eye fall quickly below that. The 3rd tier consists of a variety of 39X-level options depending on what you have available and to a smaller extent, the fight and your playstyle. These include the Heroic AoK, Heroic Vessel, Reg Bone Link Fettesh, and (the weakest of these) the 397 Str trink with the crit proc.

Q: What should I focus on first?A: Weapon and 2pc T13. The deathwing swords' procs are incredibly powerful. This is your single biggest dps upgrade this tier, bar none. Following that, your 2pc T13 is essential (for many fights, after a couple 397+ offset pieces you'd break a 4pc T12 regardless). Customize your tier selection to the fight and strategy. In many cases where specific-durition burst is required, the T12 4pc is largely wasted (this is a huge frusteration for me right now), as you end up off-target for some of that extra zealotry time. Case and point, if you're struggling with Spine, killing Tendons in 1 case of "Seal armor breach" is the key to beating it. Their cast is up for 23 seconds; a 35 second Zealotry doesn't matter. Depending on your strategies for fights like Yor'sahj, Zon'ozz and other bosses this could come into play there too.

As always, feel free to post questions you might have. With some of the posters up above watching this topic, you have a great resource for Rets here (yes, I'm looking at you, Pliers, and Ana )

"Don't facepalm at me... Ret paladins don't facepalm each other. Its against the code!" -Anafielle

warden wrote:I'm in a postey mood today, so I figured I'd write something of a preemptive FAQ to answer some of the common questions I've been getting and maybe help some tanks looking to gear up their offspecs.

Q: What off-set piece do I use?A: At the T13 normal level, its almost a toss-up between gloves and shoulders; For tank offspecs, I'd reccomend shoulders, because your 397-offset gloves are purchased with valor points and you have mainspec stuff to buy with those. The tier gloves are not great, and the offset hands are solid. The other alternative are the 403 shoulders from Spine. These are amazing, but the tier shoulders are also decent. Use whichever you can get, and pick up your T13 4pc in the other slots. At the heroic level, there are no offset gloves, so the offset shoulders are the clear winner.

I agree with all except the openning statement...Shoulders all the way.. ilvl403 shoulder with mastery are head and shoulders above the hands... In adition, with the need to buy 3BIS from the vendor, even with ret MS, you are probably aiming at the 6th week before being able to get the Offspec gloves.

An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.

I'll be buying my 3rd Valor piece from the vendor this week, and would be able to buy the gloves next week (5th week). Rets are buying Relic (700 points/week1/300 left over), cloak (1250 points/week2/50 left over), neck (1250 points/week4/800 points left over) in 4 weeks, having 1800 points to spend after capping in week 5. Furthermore, the neck is a 6 ilvl upgrade over the Heroic Shannox one, meaning some people might elect to go for gloves first, depending on the current state of their gear.

Also, realize the shoulders are definately a great piece, but so are the tier shoulders (both mastery pieces). You must consider the relative gain. Using great offset shoulders forces you into using bad tier gloves (crit/haste). At the heroic level, this choice is irrelevent (no offset gloves), but at the normal level it isn't so clear. The tier shoulders are actually pretty decent (especially if you prefer Exemplar's spreadsheet's reccomendation of haste>crit), and the offset gloves are MUCH better than the tier ones.

Don't get me wrong; I agree the shoulders are better based on strength alone... my main point with this was that getting 4pc T13 is more important than holding out for tier gloves to use the shoulders at the 397/403 level. While those of us pushing right into heroic gear see a clear path here, not everyone is doing that. Some will be gearing as an offspec (and taking what they can get) and some will not have access to much gear outside the 397 tier until much later in dragon soul.

My minor frustration is that I raid little enough that LFR is my sole source of loot, and my ret set is not good enough (or existent) that I feel confident queueing as DPS rather than a tank. To top it off, I feel like I need to (?) spend my VP/JP on tanking gear rather than ret gear to stay viable.... otoh, we don't do hard modes, so maybe it's moot.

warden wrote: While those of us pushing right into heroic gear see a clear path here, not everyone is doing that.

The shoulders are a about a 40 str winner, with a tad less mastery/hit and trading haste for crit, while the gloves are a 240 mastery gain in exchange for about the same in haste and a bit of crit.

You are right, i went into HM, and the OP was speaking in normal.If you (will) have access to HM, the shoulder>hands, but in normal mode i think the gloves are better bet.

If we are speaking only in ret-offspec/leftovers, ANYTHING that gives you 2pieces T13, it's a HUGE improvement, never mind if it's the shoulders head or whatever.

Kelaan wrote:My minor frustration is that I raid little enough that LFR is my sole source of loot, and my ret set is not good enough (or existent) that I feel confident queueing as DPS rather than a tank. To top it off, I feel like I need to (?) spend my VP/JP on tanking gear rather than ret gear to stay viable.... otoh, we don't do hard modes, so maybe it's moot.

Kellan, Can you:A) Press a button every 1,5secondsB) Do not go AFK during 2-5minutesC) Get of the "death stuff on the floor" or do not stay there too much timeD) Stay alive during at least 50-60% of the fight

IF you can make at least 1 of the 4above, i think you can make it top 5dps... To be honest i don't agree with the "if i can queue i can go" mentality, (i.e. DPS with full tank gear\purplez ilvl in the bag), but if you can do the dps\performance expected, there is no reason not to go, i.e. because you don't have a epic trinket or whatever.Myself i went Disc Smite spec using the Archangel to AoE heal and reached 10th on the damage done and 2nd on the healing...So will queue as healer in disc/smite, but will not go shadow because despite having the gear i don't know what i'm doing.

An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.

Mannstein wrote:Can you:B) Do not go AFK during 2-5minutesC) Get of the "death stuff on the floor" or do not stay there too much timeD) Stay alive during at least 50-60% of the fight

IF you can make at least 1 of the 4above, i think you can make it top 5dps...

LOL. It's so true. Top ten, at least -- hell my tank is like top 12 dps or something half the time. Thanks for the reassurance. Right now my gear is pretty much S10/S11 pvp gear gemmed for str and reforged for hit/exp/crit. I'll have to change from pvp-prot to ret, I guess, and give it a whirl.

Hmmm..im sketchy about this 2 piece T 13. Last night I was having fun running 25 man ICC for transmog gear. There was another ret paladin in the raid. Consistently he out DPSed me by about 2-3k. I could pull 35k and hed pull 38. i was like that the whole time. I checked his gear and he was still running off the 4 piece t12 with t13 gloves. his trinkets were the Reg vessel and a regular AoK. I need to test this for a while.

Grimlyn wrote:Hmmm..im sketchy about this 2 piece T 13. Last night I was having fun running 25 man ICC for transmog gear. There was another ret paladin in the raid. Consistently he out DPSed me by about 2-3k. I could pull 35k and hed pull 38. i was like that the whole time. I checked his gear and he was still running off the 4 piece t12 with t13 gloves. his trinkets were the Reg vessel and a regular AoK. I need to test this for a while.

Grimlyn,The 2pieces is huge, really huge, especialy since you get used to the "delay" on the HP gain from judgment.About him doing more dps than you it's hard to figure on that feedback... what is your weapon? What is his weapon? etc...

There are some changes with the 2pieces that take a while to manage...

An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.

Grim-The 4pcT12 is a great set bonus, it just doesn't work out for many fights in Dragon Soul. The core problem is that the 4T12 essentially locks you into a fixed 35 second burn with a 9 second lead-in... That's 44 seconds you're locked to the boss. Many bosses in Dragon Soul have mechanics that simply don't let you do this.

The 2pT13 (and later, 4pT13) cuts this down it two ways. First, your ramp up is seriously reduced because of the extra HP gain. Second, your "burn" phase is cut from 35 seconds to 20 and you have a bit more freedom timing your burn with Inquisition uptime (with the 4pT12 you have to start it on a fresh refresh). This means, if you're willing to sacrifice a teensy bit of GanK uptime (~4 seconds), you can start your burn at the 6 second mark into a fight (critical on fights that burn hero near the pull), which can often net you a whole extra cooldown rotation in the fight.

Examples:Hagara is up for ~25 seconds before her first p2. With 2pT13, you can burn GanK on the pull, do your first burn on your first set of HP at the ~6 second mark, and finish your burn just as she transitions. With the 4pT12 you either waste ~19 seconds of your burn or have to push back til after the first transition.

Yor'sahj's first ooze comes out ~20 seconds into the fight. Unless you're allowed to sit on the boss, same situation as above (my RL lets me finish my burn, which means sitting on the boss for about 4 seconds after the ooze comes out, then rocket booting to the ooze, but that's us. I wouldn't be able to sit on the boss for the whole first ooze if I had 4pT12).

On Heroic, Zon'ozz's 2nd and 3rd collapse phases, depending on your tentacle strat, can be very hard to set up a burn during, as with his tight enrage you really don't want to sit on holy power or refresh Inq early to set up a burn. 2pT13 lets you have plenty of breathing room to get a full burn in during the collapse and get back out to start killing tentacles during the black phase.

On spine, tendons are up for 23 seconds. Assuming you're saving 3hp for the start of the tendons to pop Zealotry, a 20 second complete burn is FAR more dps on the tendon than 23 seconds of a 35 second burn.

Don't stress about what you saw in ICC. Check your parses on relevent fights (even using LFR if needed) and against the ~80% or 90% curve on WoL ranking if you're worried about how you're doing comparatively.

"Don't facepalm at me... Ret paladins don't facepalm each other. Its against the code!" -Anafielle

What's your opener look like Warden? I only picked ret back up recently, got 2pt13 but using the mastery proc trinket from one of the new 5 mans. I'm generally doing a 2 hp inq before getting my 3hp for zealotry, not sure if I should go for a 3hp inq instead (meaning I don't need to refresh it during burn) or just pop zealotry after my initial 3 hp to maximise overlap of burn and trinket proc/pre-pot (a lot of which is getting wasted at the moment) but again having to put up inq during burn.

Normally I wouldn't go on DP proc, I'd let GanK stacks build until 3HP, but in this case maximizing pre-pot time is more important. I also usually judge running in unless I can start right up on the boss (Ultraxion, first pull of Hagara). You should have about 26-28 sec of Inq when you start your burn.

Remember that popping Inq at 2Hp only gives you Inq uptime for one filler (which is holy wrath unless you get an AoW proc on the first CS or J) and one CS past just waiting for 3HP--usually not worth 25%+ of your pre-pot time and most of your trinket proc.

On situations where I'm pressed for time, I modify a bit:

Pre-potGanK@3HP, Zeal, Inq, AW--note, it is very important to use Zeal first.

This sometimes costs me one TV at the end of the burn, depending on how the timing works out, but is worth it in situations where doing the full opener would leave me chilling out with 3-4 seconds of cooldowns up and nothing to attack. I'm also using two trinkets that build stacks, so I don't really factor trinket proc into the calc, and I can burn my Eng gloves with the burn.

Hope that helps?

"Don't facepalm at me... Ret paladins don't facepalm each other. Its against the code!" -Anafielle